A Series of Coincidental Events
by blakhoole
Summary: When a teenage boy stops a museum robbery, he meets 4 girls who will teach him how to survive on an alien planet. But while he has friends, he also has enemies to watch for. It'll be an interesting ride, to say the least! (New chapter out NOW - October 28!).
1. Why You Shouldn't Be A Hero

**Why You Shouldn't Be A Hero**

My eyes snapped open and were instantly assailed by a flare of light. I groaned limply and draped my hand across my eyes, while feeling a coating of sweat surround my body. The light had died enough for me to grab a survey of my surroundings - a long, wooden building, slatted roof, display cases spread around the room, large paintings draped on the walls.

_This doesn't look like home._

Now I was seriously confused. The last thing I remembered was lying down on my couch at home. Then, a bright light…

_So that's what it was._

I grunted and staggered to my feet. My backpack was trapped under my back, and I spent the better part of ten minutes disentangling myself from the twisted harness. The display cases had holographic exhibits in them - one had a revolving hologram of a diamond-shaped crystal in it. Another had a long, metal sword and worn scabbard. A third had a long banner with the words S.D.C emblazoned on them in vivid gold.

A museum.

Something crashed against the back wall. Robbers, most likely. I dropped down behind the cover of a display case and lifted my head as high as I dared. Through the translucent glass, I saw the door of the museum crash open. Three people slipped inside before one of them hauled the door shut. I instantly took in their appearances. One was wearing a mask, and had a black T-shirt with a fierce-looking logo on it. Their skin was speckled - _speckled?! _and they had…

_two horns._

_What?!_

I choked and instinctively swallowed back a remark that would have definitely been audible. _How the hell did humans grow horns? Unless they were some kind of… some kind of…_

Until now, the word "alien" had only been ever used by me in a comical context. But seeing the other two robbers - both with a pair of rust-colored, dog-shaped ears, made me hesitate.

_Holy shit, did I really just land on an alien planet?_

All three robbers wore a black T-shirt with that fierce-looking logo, reminiscent of a panther but with a higher jawline. The shirts were splattered by simulated blood, and angry red letters shouted at the bottom of the shirt: WHITE FANG. In the museum, sound traveled quietly, so I was just about able to hear their words. "Remember, vandalize this place." the bull-headed guy said in a deep rumble. "Kill any humans here. Show them no mercy."

The two dog-men bowed, before they moved on to the display case nearest them. My blood chilled as I saw them take out weapons - two curved longswords with runes glinting along the length of the blade. I clenched my jaw as I saw one of the dog-men smash the diorama with his sword. The burglar alarm howled to life, but the men paid it no attention. One of the dog-men had a trio of freckles on his face, the other didn't. I quickly catalogued them as Dog-Man #1 (no freckles) and Dog Man #2 (freckles).

I fished my phone out of my pocket and punched in the PIN, but stopped short when I saw the red X at the corner of the screen.

_No service? How in the hell did I have no service? This was a 5G phone!_

This sucked, majorly, because I couldn't call 911. Or, I couldn't call 911 because I wasn't on Earth, and I couldn't call what this world's _equivalent _of 911 was because, oh yeah, _I don't have any fucking cell service!_

I just had to take matters into my own hands.

Now, if you're still reading this, first, thank you for listening to the annoying ramblings of a teenage boy. Second, please, _please_, for the love of God and all that is fucking holy, do _not, _do _not_, I cannot stress this enough, do not be a fucking idiot and do what I just did.

"Hey!" Yeah, on my part, that was a pretty idiotic decision.

All three robbers froze, and I was suddenly looking into three pairs of sky-blue eyes. First came a shadow of fear flitting over the surface of their eyes, followed by a stony gaze. Then came the weapons. Three identical sets of black cutlasses, with _pistols secured on top of them_.

I had three seconds, maybe, before they opened fire on me.

So I ran.

Let's get one thing straight - I don't know how the Dog-Men even got into that criminal organization - the White Fang - because they had the aim of Stormtroopers.

"Kill the human!" growled Bull-Man. (Or Ox-Man. I couldn't tell.)

As I turned tail, a violent clatter ripped off behind me. The first fusillade punched into the floor, but hearing the loud whistle of gunfire sent a spurt of adrenaline through my body. I covered the twenty meters to another display case just as another burst of gunfire slammed into the floor.

In the exact same position that I was running from five seconds earlier.

If I hadn't been in such a life or death situation, I would have burst out in laughter.

The third round of bullets instantly pulverized the glass of the display case near me, and I suddenly regained my senses of the situation.

What could I do? I could:

Run to a display case with a weapon and engage them in hand to hand combat.

Wait for the 911-equivalent emergency services to arrive.

Hope that the White Fang members have such bad aim that I can somehow get through this alive.

Option 3 seemed more and more unlikely, as a blind-fired carpet of bullets hit the wall just a few millimeters above my head. They were getting bolder, and I was being pinned down.

_Fuck._

I needed to move, and I needed to move now. I spared barely a second to glance at my surroundings. A few display cases had some blocks or bricks. Scythes, rapiers - oh, there was the sword that I first saw. It was still hanging in its display case, undisturbed by the violence that was occurring around it.

"Do not let the human escape!" bayed Dog-Man #1.

"Kill the human!" remarked Dog-Man #2.

The problem - it was fifty meters away. Even with an adrenaline rush, I doubted I could get that far before a lucky spray-and-pray found its way into my back or my skull. I had to use a decoy. I briefly thought of using my backpack, but it had all my documents and my safety kit, with a first aid kit. Regretfully, I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and flung it at the main doors as far as I could. As the phone curved through the air, I sneaked a glance at the situation. Ox/Bull Man was firing at the ground near me (suppressive fire, maybe?), while Dog-Man #1 had curved around the back, intending to flank, and Dog-Man #2 had bravely moved upfront. I saw the robbers' eyes look at the phone mid-flight - the guns angling upwards to open up on their new target.

And I _hauled ass_.

As I ran like the wind, I spared a cursory glance to see my phone turn into assorted pieces of scrap metal. A pang of regret shot through my heart before I quashed it. I dove behind the display case just as the White Fang members opened fire on the display case where I had been a few seconds before. As I saw the bullets rip into the booth and the glass turn into thousands of deadly crystal shards, fear clawed at me. _That was too fucking close._

Now, how to get the sword?

Briefly, I considered hurling my backpack at the glass, then I took another glance at the label printed on the exhibit. The sword was named Crocea Mors, and it was donated by a "Jaune Arc". I muttered a quick mental prayer to whoever "Jaune Arc" was - and only then saw the label that said: THIS EXHIBIT IS SECURED WITH SHATTERPROOF GLASS.

_Well fuck_.

So throwing my backpack at the case was out. But what about my fists? Hey, desperation was the only weapon I had, and so I had no other choice. I figured that Jaune Arc wouldn't mind, considering it was self defense.

I swung three punches at the glass, which buckled but didn't shatter. I put all my power into one titanic punch, and sent it forward. The shatterproof glass, ironically, shattered into dust, while I grabbed the sword off its display case. Of course, the burglar alarm went off, but this actually worked in my favor. I hefted the sword in one hand, just as Dog-Man #2 barreled around the corner, and ran smack into me. A shadow of surprise flitted across his eyes, which was all the invitation I needed to attack as he fumbled with his weapon.

The sharp end of the sword swung downward, poised to aim for his arm, but at the last second, I jerked it to the side, and the flat end of Crocea Mors slammed into his arm. Dog-Man #2 gave a shout of pain and dropped the pistol as he staggered back. I knew he would only be stunned for a moment, so I seized the advantage, smashing his skull with the flat of the blade. He crumpled like an axed tree, as a sound reminiscent of a cracked eggshell reverberated around the museum. I took a second to observe him. His chest rose and fell, indicating he was still alive. While I wouldn't have particularly minded if he lived or died, the 911-substitutes probably would.

"Brother Canis?" Dog-Man #1 shouted. "Brother Canis, report!"

_So his name was Canis_, I mused, as I observed my handiwork with grim satisfaction. And just in time too - I peeked over the corner, pistol in hand, to see Dog-Man #1 staring at me with his jaw dropped in disbelief. I snapped off a couple of shots. Fortunately, one ended up hitting his hand. With a shout of pain and anger, Dog-Man #1 dropped his pistol and clutched at the pink-and-red mess that was once his hand, as I charged across the floor and pistol-whipped him with Canis's pistol.

_Well that could have gone better, _I said wryly, as Dog-Man #1 crumpled like his comrade. Now I just had to find Ox/Bull-Man. I picked up Dog-Man #1's pistol (excellent, full clips), and loaded them into Canis's gun, while I left Dog-Man #1's bloodstained weapon on the floor next to him. Like Canis, he was definitely unconscious, but alive. Blood ran down from his arm in a gentle trickle, pooling on the wooden floor. I winced in sympathy of the poor cleaner who had to clean the place.

I ran around to the other corner, hoping to find a good spot to draw out covering fire, and instead found Ox/Bull-Man staring at me from fifty meters away.

As he brought the pistol up to train a bead on me, I charged forward with Crocea Mors, intending to impale him with the blade, but he loosed off a burst of gunfire. I felt a very sharp prick, like a needle, in my leg, and the impact made me stagger backwards a bit, but my inertia carried me forward and I planted a right hook in Ox/Bull-Man's jaw.

As he staggered backwards, shocked and stunned, I hit him with a left hook, which sent him staggering backwards even more. Then I shot out my foot, which connected with his chest in a very satisfying way. Ox/Bull-Man was blown backwards into an exhibit, where he collided with a bone-shattering crunch. Something definitely broke. And it wasn't the safety glass.

For a few seconds I felt proud. I stopped a _museum robbery!_ Then, as the adrenaline rush ebbed and my heart slowed down, I felt a piercing flare of pain in my leg. I only had a second to glance at it before the searing pain made me buckle to the ground. My leg had a huge, bloody gash in it. It must have been at least 15-20 centimeters long, and blood was steadily draining from the hole. The mere sight of it made me woozy, but I unzipped my backpack and wound a wad of bandages over the gaping injury. There wasn't anything else I could do - it seemed pointless to slap a Band-Aid on it.

Every movement felt as though someone was taking a red-hot nail to my leg. It hurt worse than words could describe. After only thirty minutes, the bandage was soaked through with crimson, from moving barely a meter.

Then the front door crashed open - again. But this time, it wasn't any more robbers who bolted into the entryway.

It wasn't any police officers.

Instead, four teenage girls stood near the door.

And, although I wouldn't know about it at the time, these girls would play a part in forever changing my life, and telling me how to live on an alien planet.


	2. RWBY ex Machina

When Ruby barged into the foyer, all that she could see was a scene of utter devastation. Exhibits had been broken and lay inert, useless in flurries of static. A dusting of glass covered the floor, twinkling shards of crystal reflecting the dying sunlight. And, perhaps most gruesome – a long snake of blood from one of the exhibits, trailing beyond a diorama. Whatever had gone down here hadn't been easy. And if they were the _White Fang_ – Ruby's stomach churned – there were almost certainly going to be human casualties. "Yang!" Ruby called. "Get in here! NOW!"

There was a flurry of rapid footsteps, and Yang kicked open the door and took position, looking frantically around the room. After a brief pause, she relaxed, and only then realized what kind of situation this was. Injured White Fang members, destroyed exhibits… yeah, suffice it to say this was not the kind of mission she was aiming for.

"Oh my Oum..." she whispered. "Blake, Weiss. We've got…." She paused, wondering exactly what kind of words were needed to describe exactly how much of a fiasco this situation was. After considering _disaster, fuckup, conflict, _and, most recently, _Noodle Incident_, she decided to use the "universal signal for problem". "Blake, Weiss. Get in here. There's a…. situation."

_A fiasco and a half is more like it. Is that an SDC banner? Weiss is going to have a fit. Blake won't be happy about the White Fang. Then there's the whole blood thing. Gross. And if it's the White Fang, of all people, Oum, someone was really unlucky to be in the same room as them. My guess is there will be bodies to clean up. Poor Ruby, this won't be easy for her._

Just as the door had swung shut, it burst open again, revealing Blake and Weiss standing in the entryway, weapons drawn. Weiss was the first to speak, stomping her foot angrily. "Those animals! When my father finds out about this..."

_I feel sorry for whoever gets caught in the crossfire. If my father finds out about this…_ she shuddered.

Blake calmly held up her left hand, though she continued to sweep the area with the Gambol Shroud pistol in her palm. "Pointing fingers does nothing, Weiss. It's the White Fang. They were here. Deal with it." Finally satisfied that the area was clear, she stowed the pistol in her holster, though her expression betrayed a hint of revulsion as she spotted the trail of blood. "Standing around does nothing. We need to go in, weapons drawn. Clear the area."

"We are not _police_, Blake!" Weiss interrupted, exasperated at her. "We are _Huntresses_! Our job is to kill Grimm. It is not to kill terrorists!"

"The White Fang are _not_ terrorists!" Blake objected, shooting Weiss a glowering look.

"Well, we wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for our _amazing leader_!" Weiss retorted, putting as much effort as she could to sound sarcastic in those last two words. Ruby shrank back. It was true, they wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her.

Team RWBY were just enjoying a night out on the streets of Vale, when Ruby heard gunshots and screaming. The team quickly made a decision whether to respond or to run away. Weiss, of course, opined to run away. Blake was more split, but decided to respond and fight. Yang voted to fight (she could never turn down one). It was down to Ruby to make the decision, but she decided to fight. So the team grabbed their weapons and dragged a protesting Weiss all the way down to the Vale Museum.

"Enough!" Yang intervened, placing herself between Weiss and Blake. "We have weapons. We are armed. We can get any remaining White Fang members to surrender. And we figure out if anyone innocent died in this."

Weiss nodded reluctantly. "Fine. Ruby, take charge. We'll follow you."

Ruby nodded, suddenly more confident then when she had first seen the carnage. "Everyone, weapons out. Make sure they're ready to fire."

Everyone nodded, and Ruby pulled Crescent Rose from her holster. In seconds, the mechanical whirring of the red-and-white metal cube turned to a sinister, lethal-looking scythe.

Ruby nodded at Yang. "Your turn."

"Aw, thanks!" Yang beamed, before two barrels rose from Ember Celica. Yang tapped the gauntlets a few times before nodding in approval. "Yep, locked and loaded."

"Weiss?"

"Ugh." Weiss reached for her holster and pulled out a white crystal sword emblazoned with runes. "Myrtenaster's ready."

"Blake?"

Blake nodded, whipping Gambol Shroud out of her holster. "Ready."

"Okay, everyone," Ruby said, taking a quick breath. "This is how it's going to work. We all clear the corners, starting one exhibit at a time. We find anyone unconscious, we see if they're breathing. If they are, we don't do anything. If they're armed, don't collect the guns. Leave that to the police."

The group decided that the easiest thing to do would be to start at the location of the blood trail and search in a square pattern, moving in concentric circles inward. Ruby stifled a gasp as she saw the long blood trail, which had turned dark blue due to the absence of oxygen. _What could have caused this_?

She didn't have to wonder long, as the rest of Team RWBY gathered around the unconscious body of a White Fang member, pupils dilated, a black shirt stained with blood, two dog ears poking out of his skull. The rest of his body didn't look too bad – save for a giant pink-and-white smear where his hand should have been. His cutlass-pistol was lying a few feet away from him.

Blake unsheathed her katana, a glimmer of light reflected in the blade, and swiped the tip across the man's face. A miniscule dot of blood emerged from the cut. "No Aura." Ruby noticed.

"Alive, at least," Blake pronounced. "That's one of the Dog Brothers. I never knew them personally. They typically attacked under the cover of darkness. They were ruthless with their operations. If they found a human, they'd… kill him."

A very harsh silence fell over the group for thirty seconds. Yang was the first member to break the silence.

"Have they ever left survivors, in any case?"

Blake shook her head. No.

"Well..." Yang paused, awkwardly, "let's just finish this and wrap it up."

Team RWBY had to move about fifty meters to find the unconscious body of Canis, his eyes closed, a small smear of blood on the upper half of his shirt.

Blake swiped the tip of the blade across Canis's face, and a tiny drop of blood jumped onto the katana. "No Aura as well. Also alive. We have to worry about any victims they might have claimed – look." Blake pointed to an exhibit that was shredded, bullet holes and scar marks seared into the wood. Ruby gasped. _Anyone behind that thing would have been killed. Nothing would have been able to withstand those bullets._

"Wait, I think I see something!" Yang pointed at a spot of white, and Team RWBY rushed over to where she was pointing. There, they found another unconscious form. It was the form of a teenager wearing a white shirt and denim jeans, a large bloodstain surrounding the thigh area. A bloody wad of gauze was wrapped around his leg.

"Human, for sure. What do we do now? He's been injured." Blake said expressionlessly.

"Does he have any Aura left?" Yang asked.

"I mean, I could test it, but it doesn't look like he'd react to that too well."

"Check his pulse." Weiss suggested.  
Blake knelt down, pressing two fingers gently on his carotid artery. She was reassured to feel the gentle throbbing through her fingers. _Alive, at least._

"He's alive," Blake explained, standing back up to face her team members. "But that wound can't be good." She pointed to the crimson-stained wad of bandage covering the injury.

"So, what do we do?" Ruby said.

"Well, we could..." Blake began, but then tailed off – none of the answers were good. _We could leave him. We could take him to Beacon. We could take him to a doctor. We could take him to the police._

Of course, there were problems with each of those solutions. Leaving him would almost certainly doom him to death by blood loss. Taking him to Beacon, while not hard initially, would necessitate an incredible amount of work. Taking him to a doctor would also incite awkward questions, such as identification. Taking him to the police would require someone strong to drag him or carry him. In short, there was only one real answer to the problem: help him for the time being, _then_ see if he could be admitted to Beacon.

"We could… what?" Weiss interrupted. "What exactly are we doing?"  
"We're healing him, showing him around, and taking him to Beacon."

"We're-_what?"_ Weiss interrupted, shocked.

"Weiss, listen to me. If we leave him, he'll die. If we take him to the police, we need some form of ID, and we need someone to carry him. Same if we take him to a doctor. We need to help him. Here, _now_."

"But-what-that-you...ugh. Fine."

Normally, since Ruby was the leader, she would be the one in charge of assigning roles, but Blake had taken control of the role assignment. She had now delegated four roles – Ruby and Blake would help change the bandages and take care of him, while Weiss and Yang would search his backpack for documentation.

"Well, let's get started," Ruby said. "Time's a-wasting."

Ten minutes had passed since the role delegation, and Weiss and Yang now sat cross-legged on the floor surrounded by a rapidly ascending-height pile of items. Since they were looking for documentation, they needed to search _everything_in his backpack and take it out, even if they needed to strip the entire backpack. The search quickly deteriorated into Weiss pulling out items and Yang judging them with terse, one-word responses.

"Laptop."

"Toss."

"Photos."

"Toss."

"Neat looking Scroll thing."

"_Weiss..."_

"Sorry."

"Carry on."

"Passport?"  
"Keep."

"Here, he's got some paperwork."

"Keep."

"Oh, here's a first-aid kit."

"Definitely keep this one."

The search lasted twenty minutes, by which Weiss and Yang had quickly become bored with their role at hand. When Weiss finally pulled the last item out of the backpack ("Wallet?" "Keep."), they finally had the items they needed – passports, paperwork, and the first-aid kit. Everything else lay in scattered piles around the floor.

Ruby and Blake, however, were not just sitting around doing nothing. (Or at least, that was their intention.) Ruby's job was to peel off the old bandage, while Blake's job was to wind a new set of bandages around the wound. Before any of them could do their job, the boy groaned and jerked his feet.

"He's waking up!" Ruby said, and scrambled for Crescent Rose—but the boy paused and then relaxed. Ruby heaved a sigh of relief, taking her hand from Crescent Rose's hilt.

"Okay, guys, that was a false alarm. I think we're okay to-"

With no warning, there was a shout, and a pair of blue eyes shot open.


	3. Out of This World - Literally

**A/N: **

**So, I bet a lot of you weren't expecting this to pop up in your feed. Well, here's a math equation they don't teach people at school:**

**fanfiction + crushing schoolwork + teenage life + laziness = inability to work on fanfiction for 2 months.**

**Okay, enough self-deprecation. It's about time I got together and actually got something done.**

**So, without further ado (as in 2-months ado), I present to you, Chapter 3 of _A Series of Coincidental Events._ **

**Enjoy.**

**Chapter 3:** **Out of This World – Literally**

I groaned and my eyes snapped open, giving me an excellent view of the museum's ceiling and a chandelier that was swinging precariously on it's hook. _Please god, if I make it out of here alive, don't kill me by throwing a chandelier onto me._

Then, I picked up a series of whispers through my ears.

"He's awake."

"Great, what do we do now?"

Panic shot through my body. I wasn't alone. There were other people here. Perhaps police, or White Fang members who were dispatched to clean up the survivors of this massacre?

But when the source of the voices -four sources, in fact – showed up, I realized that it wasn't one of those circumstances at all. I found myself staring into four pairs of eyes in my peripheral vision, and wanted to understand who they were.

The first person I saw was a girl, about fifteen, with brunette hair and brown eyes. She wore a red cloak, red hoodie, and red laced boots. Overall, she looked like a cosplayer, except for the enormous red scythe over her shoulder.

_What the hell? Am I hallucinating? _

There was no way that Earth could have made that kind of weapon. It was almost as tall as her, and – gods above – was that a _gun barrel_ perched on top of it?

I finally tore my eyes away from her and began to observe the other three people. They were all girls, and one had a pair of lilac eyes, blonde hair, and a yellow jumpsuit under a T-shirt.

Another one had white hair and white eyes, wearing a white dress. _Huh, they seem to dress very "color-coded" her__e__._

The third had black hair, black eyes, and… _oh shit._

Cat ears. Two rounded cat ears.

I swallowed back a wave of panic that pounded through my gut. _Calm down, you idiot. If she wanted to have shot you, you would have been shot already._

Fortunately, I had one thing going for me – although she held a pistol in her hand, there was an unmistakeable look of concern on her face. I relaxed slightly. In most cases, people didn't give their victims a look of concern before they shot them.

Wait a second, a pistol?

I was sure that I was looking at four teenage girls, and no adults. The thought also made my eyes wander to the rest of the girls. The blonde girl had a giant metal gauntlet on her right arm with two twin gun barrels. The white-haired girl had a bright white-and-silver sword with runes emblazoned on them.

_Okay, that's concerning._

I wasn't certain if something happened, or if I blacked out because of the injury I had received. Am I still on Earth?

_Of course you're still on Earth. You're nowhere else, you bastard, that's a crazy notion._

Before I could do anything else, however, the red-cloaked girl spoke.

"Are you okay?"  
"About as well as I can be with a giant hole in my leg," I joked, trying to ease the tension, although flares of pain were shooting through my leg.

The white-haired girl looked astonished, and a bit miffed. "This is no laughing manner! Those terrorists who arrived earlier destroyed my father's museum!"

"And shot me?" I coughed.

The blonde girl winked, while the white-haired girl looked even angrier than before, and, if possible, a bit flustered.

"What? No!" she said, a blush far more visible. "I mean, yes, but no! I mean-"

The black-haired girl coughed loudly, although the subtle smirk on her face made it clear that there was a semblance of enjoyment in seeing her friend squirm. "Weiss, you'll have time to make friends later. Right now we have to help this guy and take him to Beacon."

I was secretly thankful learning the white-haired girl's name – Weiss – since referring to her by "White-Haired Girl" would get tiring after ten minutes. Which reminded me…

"So, before we do anything, what are your names?"

"I'm Ruby!" the red-hooded girl said excitedly.

"I'm Yang," the blonde girl pointed out.

"I'm Blake," the black-haired girl said. "And that beautiful _ray of sunshine _there-" Blake continued, emphasizing as much sarcasm as she could- "is our own Ice Queen, Weiss."  
"Hey!"

"Anyway, we were going to take you to Beacon, but there is something you'll need to do first", Blake pressed on, oblivious to Weiss's discomfort.

"Oh, one more thing, we forgot to tell you our names!" the red-cloaked girl pipes up. I'd forgotten she was even there. "I'm Ruby. The blonde bombshell is my sister, Yang. You know about Weiss and Blake, of course."

"Of course," Weiss muttered, as Blake shot her a dour look.

I staggered to my feet, leaning against a shattered diorama. "Can I ask you a question?" I mumbled.

Ruby tilted her head, unsure, but then nodded. "Of course."

I looked at her, then Yang, then Weiss, then Blake. "Have any of you heard of a place called North America?"  
"Is that near Atlas?" Weiss inquired.

_Atlas? What the hell and where the hell is Atlas?_

Panic started to crush me, gripping me around the throat, threatening to suffocate me. I choked back something that I would have regretted saying, and began my next question.

"Okay, how about South America?"

Ruby shook her head.

_This is crazy. This can't be real. This can't be real. This can't be real… Where the hell am I?_

"Where am I?" _Oh no, did I say that aloud?_

"Uh, are you okay, mister?" Ruby asked, looking a bit shocked. "We're on Remnant."

"What's Remnant?" I mumbled stupidly. Of course, this had the exact opposite effect that I had intended – all four girls were now looking at me like I was an alien from another planet.

Which in truth, I technically was.

Which was the last thought I had before bursting into tears, sobbing into the fabric of my shirt. _I'm stuck here. I'll never be able to do anything again._

"I'll get a tissue," Weiss muttered, as drops of salty liquid began to pour from my hands.

Thirty minutes and two packets of tissues later, I sat on the floor, still sad, but all of my sadness had been let out. There was a dark wet spot on Yang's shirt, indicating where she had let me put my head on her shoulder and just let me have it.

"Good, are you done now?" Weiss said, handing me the last tissue.

"I still want to know where I am. What's Remnant?"

"Come on, you must be kidding," Weiss said, giving me a blank stare. "You don't know what Remnant is? Are you some kind of alien?"

_Yes._

"No, I just don't know what Remnant is. How hard is that to understand?"

There was a very long silence, broken only by the uncomfortable shuffling of my feet.

"So, you mean to tell me that you're an alien from another planet. Is that right?" Ruby said, confused.

"Well..."  
I never had a chance to explain, because the door burst open – for the third time in half an hour – and this time, it wasn't my rescuers.  
It was four people wearing masks and carrying pistols. They saw me, they saw Ruby, and then all hell broke loose.

I felt something seize my hand in an iron grip, dragging me down to the floor with a bone-crunching thud.

_Well, everything's intact, at least._

I tried to move my head, but something clamped down on it and I heard Yang's voice whisper into my ear:

"Don't move. We'll get you out of here. You haven't got a weapon or Aura. Sit tight."

_Well, now I have to add Aura to the "things-I-don't-know-about list._

All I could hear from my vantage point was the loud sporadic crack of gunfire, mixed with the sounds of battle – assorted yells and screams.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, Yang's face popped back into view. "Alright, it's safe now."

I got up and immediately wished I hadn't.

The museum had turned into something reminiscent of a war zone. Ice crystals jutted out of the walls and floor, running parallel to deep cracks. The illusion of Eau de War Zone was also accentuated by the pungent smell of gunpowder – and the bullet holes decorating the exhibits. A mask, cracked in half, sat in the middle of the floor surrounded by a pink pool of flesh.

"What just happened?"

"The White Fang happened," muttered a disgruntled Weiss.

I turned to face her. "What?"

"You've honestly never heard of the White Fang? They're murderers. Traitors. They kill people because they don't appreciate Faunus equality!"

"Hey!" Blake shouted, angered at Weiss's statement. "Watch your tongue. Faunus only did this because humans were the ones who started slaughtering us and sending us to slave camps!"

"What are Faunus?" Which was my fourth question that I had asked in a ten-minute span, if my memory served me correctly.

It was Blake who answered me. "Faunus are humans with extra animal traits. Like a pair of cat ears, or..."

"Or a tail?" I said.

"Yes, that sort of thing."

"Well, why is that such a bad thing?" I asked. "Surely that's a good thing. I mean, they'd have better hearing, be more flexible, be able to help people..."

"I'm glad you see it that way." Blake interrupted. "But the truth is, there are people out there who don't see it that way. People like..." she trailed off, looking at Weiss.

"Weiss?" I said, surprised.

"Don't look at me," she growled through gritted teeth. "It's because of my father that Faunus hate my company."

"Your… company?" I said, thrown for the umpteenth time today.

Weiss sighed and began her explanation. "My father owns a Dust company-"

"Dust?"

Weiss threw a bitchy glare at me. "Would you please stop interrupting me? I'm trying to explain something, thank you very much."

I threw an even bitchier glare back at her. "Well _excuse _me, Princess!"

By the corner of my eye, I saw Ruby struggling to keep a straight face and Yang flashing a "great job!" smile at me.

"Gah! Why does everyone keep calling me that? It's heiress! I'm an heiress! Weiss Schnee, Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company!"

"But what is the Schnee Dust Company?"

"If you'd stop interrupting-"

"Alright, alright, we get it," Blake interceded, stepping in between me and Weiss. "The general gist of it is, Weiss's father runs a company and-"

"He's a racist bigot," Yang pointed out, somewhat helpfully.

"I swear," Blake muttered, "you guys have the attention span of 5-year olds."

Before the pointless infighting could kick off again, I interrupted. "So basically, Weiss's dad runs a company. But what does that have anything to do with Faunus?"

"I'm getting to that," Weiss said, more confidently, now that she was in charge of the conversation. "My dad uses Faunus as slaves, to mine dust for the SDC. When they get too tired, he fires them and replaces them with other Faunus. They don't get enough food or water. The SDC brands them to make sure they don't get away-"

"Alright, I think I get it," I interrupted, then said something that I wasn't sure if I regretted or not. But I had to try.

"Blake," I said cautiously, "are you a Faunus?"

"Why do you ask?" she said, somewhat more bored than I expect.

"The cat ears,"

"Ah, yeah. Well, to answer your question… but you won't judge me for it, right?"

"Of course not," I said confidently, with so much certainty that Blake looked surprised.

Blake looked away for a second, then realised there was no point in lying. "Yes."

There was something I wanted to say. Something that would probably alienate me and make the entire team regret knowing my existence.

(No, in case you were wondering, it's not a racist joke.)

"Well, if there are _Faun-us_," I said, "then where are the_ Faun-me_s?" It took a little while for Blake to understand the joke, but when she did, I saw her facepalm so hard she might have burst a blood vessel. Weiss looked like she was about to castrate me with her rapier, and Ruby groaned loudly, looking up at the sky as if to say, _Aw crap, we've got another pun-maker. And here I thought Yang was the only punny person I had to deal with._

"Of all the people..." Blake muttered – I didn't catch anything else.

Yang was the only person who even slightly appreciated my joke. "Ah, well. It's about a 2 out of 10," she remarked. "But you'll get better. After all, you've got the Yang-er banger on your team!"  
This time, I facepalmed so hard that I almost burst a blood vessel. It was as though the roles were reversed – now Blake, Weiss, and Ruby were glaring at Yang. _Good job, you've __ruined another one._

"One more thing you need to know about _them_," Blake said, mercifully cutting short my agony of bad-puns, and gesturing to the White Fang members who lay sprawled unconscious on the floor -"They won't stop until they get the job done."

"Which means-"

"We need to get you to Beacon, ASAP. Can you stand?" Blake said.

_What's Beacon?_ was the first question on my mind, but I banished it away. "Yes."

"Okay, then. Just follow us. We'll need to get you to Beacon ASAP," Blake continued. "Everyone else, weapons out. Be on the lookout for _anything –_ anything at all."

I took a few steps, and then, feeling comfortable enough, decided to follow the rest of the girls outside. There was still so much stuff that I needed to learn about this new world – and a positively full lexicon to go along with it. _White Fang. Beacon. Faunus. Atlas. Remnant. Dust. _But I confident that nothing else bad would happen to me in the short trip that it would take to go to _Beacon_, whatever the hell that was.

Blake's prophecy of being on the lookout for anything happened to come true, because of course my confidence would suck. Why wouldn't it?

The walk to Beacon should have taken 15 minutes. Can you guess how long it took to actually get there? Not 15 minutes. Not 20 minutes. Not 30 minutes. But a whole 45 minutes. That's right, Blake was so paranoid that we would get attacked that she had us take the extra long route, with a chance of femur-crippling depression.

"I swear, if we start moving any slower, I'm going to age in reverse," I moaned, walking down the umpteenth street for the umpteenth time at a leisurely pace of two miles per hour. My legs had already hurt from the bullet wound, and even though they seemed to heal remarkably fast, the same didn't apply to my femurs.

"I've told you already, we have to be slow, and make sure the White Fang aren't going to attack us," Blake said, repeating the words for the umpteenth time.

"Oh, come on!" I said, because I have a perfect talent for tempting fate. "It's not as if the White Fang is going to attack us any second-"

At which point, the White Fang attacked.

I felt something buzz by my head, so close it nicked a chunk of hair – and it was only when my dazed senses caught up with a loud crack that I realized I had nearly gotten my cranium splattered against the wall.

Yang pulled me down to the cover of what appeared to be a car, fumbling with the gauntlets on her wrist. She appeared to be loading something in before peering around and firing. A huge trail of flame shot from her gauntlet, roaring into the darkness. Something exploded nearby and Yang cheered "Got one!"

_What the hell? Is that an RPG?_

I glanced around to see that Ruby was unstrapping the gigantic scythe from her back. Weiss was spinning around with her rapier like a ballerina, and Blake had pulled her pistol. There were two very loud shots from Ruby's scythe, and a pained cry started to emanate from the darkness. Then, a loud pop from Blake's pistol cut the cry of pain short.

"Hostile down," Blake said matter-of-factly, calmly reloading the pistol as I heard something clink.

"Bastard! Take this!" came a shout, and then a grenade sailed through the air, coming to land right near me.

Instantly, everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. I had played Call of Duty before, but never in real life. Yet I realized that if I did nothing, the grenade would explode, sending shrapnel hurtling through the air and turning me into a puddle of chunky salsa.

In one swift motion, I threw the grenade (approximately) back where it came from.

_BOOM!_

The grenade exploded in midair, sending shards of shrapnel hissing around me. I felt something nick my hair again, but I was OK, at least. Then, I saw something that chilled my blood. Two Fang members were setting up a portable machine gun. I tried to yell something, but my voice had apparently failed in the heat of battle. _Is that a machine gun?_

_BANG! BANG! Drrrrrrrrrrt!_

"They've got a machine gun!" Ruby gasped, ducking back to the cover of her car as a series of bullets turned the windows to dust.

_BANG! _"Woohoo!" Yang cheered. "Got one more."

_Whoosh! _"Ten points!"

_BANG! _"Twenty points!"

_Whoosh! _"Thirty-"

_BANG!_

"And taken care of!" Ruby said, reloading again as multiple gunshots started to come out of the darkness.

_BANG_! _BANG! BANG!_

"Crap!" I yelled, as something once again missed my head by a millimeter. "Need some help over here!"  
Two more shots came from behind me, and the gunshots stopped.

"Thanks, Ruby!"

_Drrrrrrt! Drrrrrrrt!_

I had forgotten about the machine gun, which began to take chunks out of the rusted car I was hiding behind. Then, a huge crystal of ice blossomed from where the gunshots had been. Looking back, I saw Weiss lower the rapier, a satisfied smile on her face. _I may hate you, but you just saved my life. Thanks, Weiss._

The gunfire had finally gone silent. I waited another 30 seconds as a buffer, then yelled, "Report!"

"Okay here," I heard Ruby call out from behind me.

"Likewise," Yang echoed, casually reloading her gauntlets.

"I'm fine," Weiss said, flicking a tiny dot of blood off of her rapier.

"Alright here," Blake said, _from the top of the building._

_How is that even possible?_

"Blake, how are you up there?"

"Faunus traits – remember?"

"Oh, yeah." It spoke wonders about my memory that Blake had told me about this barely an hour ago, and I had already forgotten about it.

"Well, there goes our idea of going to Beacon without nothing going wrong." Yang said. "I told you we didn't have to move like a snail."

"Yeah, you got that right."

A little over 15 minutes later, we finally arrived at Beacon Academy. Which basically looked like any other college in America/Europe/insert-location-here, but unlike America and every location worldwide had students walking around 24/7 with loaded weapons.

There was something very off with that whole vibe. For starters, any kind of school shooting would have been a total nightmare and a half, especially considering the guns to students ratio. On the other hand, any school shooting would probably have been ended instantly for the exact same reason: students carrying weapons into their classrooms. Any legislator in America would probably have an aneurysm if they saw this kind of situation.

But, as I'm acutely aware, this isn't America. Or Earth, for that matter.

And I didn't really feel like explaining the whole thing to Ruby, Weiss, Blake, or Yang. Explaining how I was an alien from one planet was hard enough. Trying to point out to somebody (especially somebody as innocent as Ruby) how evil someone had to be to carry a gun to school and shoot at defenseless students was something I _really _didn't feel like doing.

"We're here!" Ruby said, sparing me from my moral dilemma and grandly pulling open the doors to the headmaster's office. How did I know it was the headmaster's office? There was a large golden plaque on the door with the words HEADMASTER embossed on it. I may be an idiot, but I'm not that big of an idiot.

"Headmaster Ozpin! You won't believe what we…. found-" Ruby said, trailing off as she noticed the situation.

There were three people in the room. A large, grey-haired man holding a cane sitting at a desk, a woman dressed in a shirt holding a riding crop, and another man wearing a large coat.

"For the last time, James, I cannot-" The grey-haired man trailed off as he saw me, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang in the doorway.

"Ah, excuse me, James. I believe we have visitors."

**A/N:**

**Dun dun duuun!**

**Oh yeah, cliffhangers. (and hello, Ozpin.) Guess who's familiar with those. This time, though, I (should) promise it won't take 70 days before you get another chapter. But I can't promise an upload date with schoolwork and life troubles being so finicky. For now, let's say that the next chapter gets uploaded in 1-2 weeks.**

**Let's hope I can actually stick to my plan this time. :P**

**Oh, and for those who think Volume 7 will change this story, it won't. Everything will keep going like Volumes 1-3 head canon, so it won't matter at all. I may write a V7 fic sometime, but that sometime is not today, or tomorrow for that matter.**

**(Maybe) final thing: Except for any content warnings or spoilers, all of my notes will now be at the _bottom _of every chapter rather than the top.**

**Actually final thing: I might set up a P\atreon account and D\i\scord server (I have to type them like that because won't let me type it out normally.) If I do, the details will be next chapter. **

**Next chapter coming: ? (but hopefully early November)**

**(Please read and review. Each review motivates me to keep going!)**


	4. Realization

**A/N: New chapter. Turns out positive reviews make for a surprisingly good motivator. Thank you guys!**

**Since I have a bunch of reviews, I feel like I should start answering questions in reviews. So, to answer your questions/comments:**

**gobert600: Oh, it definitely will continue, I can promise you that much. :)**

**Captaindrake123: Yeah, I kind of suck when it comes to buildup or characters reacting to situations. And you're about to see the solution to the cliffhanger, right after the end of this note! Heh heh :)**

**jamisomersley: New chapters will definitely be coming! Thanks for your review. I can't promise we won't have any more cliffhangers, though…**

Chapter 4

**Realization**

Before any of us could react, Ruby started launching into a speech which she delivered with amazing rapidity.

"SoyeahwethenwenttothemuseumandweheardgunshotsandthentheWhiteFangcameupandthenwedrove

themoffandthenwefoundthisguyandtookhimtoBeaconanditturnsouthe'sfromanotherplanetwefoundan

alien-"

Me, Yang, Weiss, and Blake looked at Ruby with concern. Ruby suddenly seemed to realize that she'd blurted too much, and started to trail off as the other three people in the room stared at her. She blushed, her face turning bright red, and then she disappeared.

_What?_

I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. It wasn't possible, people didn't just _disappear_ out of nowhere.

But all that remained of Ruby's presence was a flurry of rose petals. As impossible as it sounded, she had just… _disappeared._

_And Ruby calls me an alien. Pretty sure disappearing humans don't live on Earth._

Whatever she had done, it definitely wasn't human-like, that was for sure – I could tell by the gust of wind in the room and seeing nothing but a red blur. Then Ruby popped up right beside me. I bit down on my tongue to stop myself from screaming, and turned my gaze to the middle of the room, where the three people sat on chairs around a large table.

A rose petal, caught by the wind, drifted lazily down… and right into the grey-haired man's coffee cup, which he had left on the table.

Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang, and I went silent, as the grey-haired man looked at us for a second – his eyes were like the interior of a clock – grey and piercing. He seemed to have won the Genetic Grey lottery – grey hair, grey eyes, grey watch. Only his suit wasn't grey – instead, it was lurid green.

And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it ended.

The three people launched back into their conversation like nothing had ever happened. The grey-haired man reached into his coffee cup and daintily fished out the rose petal, before shrugging and gulping down the entire cup.

"For the last time, Ozpin, it's not that important!" The speaker –_James -_was a middle-aged man who had grey hair and brown eyes, wearing a long white coat. A small insignia on his coat read _ATLAS MILITARY GENERAL._

_Okay, Siri, add Atlas Military to the "things-I-don't-know-about-list_.", I snickered to myself.

"And how could it not be important, General Ironwood?" said the grey-haired man – sorry, _Ozpin_, I reminded myself. "We have everything planned out for the Vytal Festival. All we need to do is-"

"I know what I need to do!" Ironwood said, pounding the table in frustration. "Do you see what we have to deal with? We have _Atlesian Knights_, _Roman Torchwick, _and _dust robberies, _and Winter Schnee to deal with-" Each word was incessantly punctuated with a loud slam of his fist. At the end of the last word, the coffee cup wobbled, tipping over and splashing all over the desk, the floor, Ozpin's hair, and Ironwood's coat.

The woman gave Ironwood a stare – if looks could kill, he'd be six feet under – while Ozpin simply waved away the coffee spill. "A little spilled coffee is not a big issue. The safety of this kingdom is." I was surprised by how dignified he managed to sound – even if he had brown spots in his hair from the coffee. While Ozpin and Ironwood were distracted, I turned to Weiss and whispered, "Who's Winter?"

"My sister."  
"You have a sister?"

"Long story."

"Does she work for the SDC?"

"Long story."

"Who's Torchwick?"  
"Long story."

"Will you say _long story _for every question I have?"

Weiss pondered it for about a nanosecond, then shrugged. "Long story."

"Can you say anything else but _long story?"_

"You mean, like, I'll skewer you with my rapier if you keep talking to me_?_"

I wisely decided to shut up.

Meanwhile, Ozpin and Ironwood were still bickering like a married couple – _oh god, did I just say that?_

"You treat everything like it's not a big deal!" Ironwood reflexively held his hand over the table, then looked down at the stain on his jacket and thought better of it, pulling his hand away.

"Enough!" The woman interrupted. "Ozpin, Ironwood! Why do you have to treat each event like it's a contest for measuring di-"

Yang coughed loudly, enough to have Ozpin and Ironwood's glances swivel back at the four of us in the doorway. After a brief but silent "conversation" - if you could call it that - they must have decided to pretend like we didn't hear them bickering and shouting ten seconds ago.

Or, at least, that was my thought process when Ironwood rose from his chair and walked over to meet me. He stuck his hand out and I gripped it, before he crushed my hand with a grip like a vise.

"James Ironwood, general of the Atlesian Military. Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," I said, almost confident that my finger had been destroyed. Ozpin was the next person to stand up and walk across, giving me a slightly nicer handshake. Of course, compared to Ironwood's tendon-ruining handshake, having someone try and rip my arm off would have been more bearable.

"I'm Headmaster Ozpin, the headmaster of Beacon Academy."  
"Nice to meet you, Ozpin," I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

Finally, it was the woman's turn to cross over and give me a handshake. "Glynda Goodwitch, head teacher at Beacon Academy."

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Goodwitch."

After the torturous introductions (some, _cough cough _Ironwood, more torturous then others), I had a chance to go back to where Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang were standing.

"So, now what?" I say, to no one in particular. It's Blake who answers me.

"Now, you get asked a few questions, and then comes the Initiation."

"What's the Initiation?"  
"They test your fighting power. You have to battle against the other students."  
"Battle? As in-"  
"Yes, they are loaded weapons."  
Fear started to take hold of me. "Are you kidding me? That's insane! I don't want to be charged with murder!"

Yang laughed. "Oh, relax. We have Auras."

"What are-"

"Not important. Oh, and one more thing."

"Yeah?"  
"If you had to pick your opponents, would you pick four strong, smart, beautiful girls like us?"  
"Yang Xiao Long!"Ruby yelled, looking at Yang in shock while I stared at the ground stupidly.

My face turned bright red and I coughed. "Well-"

But it was too late, as Ruby pointed out something and began to speak really fast again. "OhlookitsOzpinhewantstotalktoyou!" I was just able to catch a glimpse of her face, which was bright scarlet with embarrassment, before she physically shoved me into Ozpin's office.

I just had time to register this before Ruby slammed the door shut—giving me one last look at her face. The door slammed so loudly that Ozpin's coffee cup rattled… then fell over again.

"Ruby!" someone chastised from behind the door, probably Yang. The door opened again and to no one's surprise it was Ruby, looking embarrassed. Then she saw me and closed the door _again…_ gently, this time.

Everyone – Ozpin, Ironwood, and the woman whose name I still hadn't caught - was staring at the door, before their gaze turned back to me. I fought down a slight stab of anxiety. _It's just like a student interview. What could go wrong?_

_Note to self: never say that out loud, you idiot._

Ozpin seemed to realize that he'd wasted enough time already. He cleared his throat, shuffling a sheaf of papers on his desk. "So, Mr… Bindweed, was it?"

An icy feeling, like cold water, started to trickle down the back of my neck. I hadn't told _anyone _about my name. Not even anyone from Remnant. How could he have just _guessed _it outright?

Wait, don't tell me. It's because he had some sort of superpower, right?

Our eyes met again – brown and grey – and this time a shiver went down my spine. Ozpin appeared to find the whole thing amusing, or maybe he was just trolling me.

"Mr Bindweed, please don't insult my intelligence. When you have a direct phone link to the White Fang headquarters, and you hear about a certain white-skinned, red-haired, brown-eyed boy who singlehandedly fought off three White Fang members by themselves, _without Aura _or a weapon, and then you see that exact same boy standing in front of your office, what are you supposed to think?"

Before I could say anything, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a monitor, running a cable down to somewhere underneath his desk.

"About five minutes after your courageous defense of the museum, this is what I saw from my hidden camera. Would you like to take a look?"

I nodded, and leaned my head in as Ozpin punched the play button on the monitor…

Clint Suddarth, the regional leader of the White Fang, was not having a very good day.

Part of the problem was that his three _best _enforcers who he had sent to destroy the Schnee Company Museum had failed in spectacular fashion. Apparently, someone with no weapons and no Aura had managed to stop them. No weapons and no Aura! Clint felt a wave of disgust. It wasn't enough that _his _soldiers, who were trained to ruthlessly kill, murder, and maim, couldn't fight off someone with no Aura and no weapon. Ridiculous.

He also had another problem on his hands – the hospital had demanded a truly exorbitant bribe (or they would release his charges to the Vale Police Department) and Clint had reluctantly reached into his pocket and withdrew a one-meter high stack of bills. The chief of the hospital barely paused to look at them, stuffing the whole wad into his pocket before sending a bunch of doctors and nurses to shove Canis, Dog-Man #2 (whose name he still hadn't bothered to figure out) and Bullrougher (ox-man) into medical beds and pump them full of sedatives to keep them asleep in coma-land while he had to deal with the repercussions that would inevitably come from his higher-ups. Even if their secrets were safe-kept, they would still remain in the hospital for three months. So that was a problem.

To make matters worse, he had a third problem to deal with as well. His idea to send the White Fang to ambush and kill Team RWBY and that boy who he so desperately wanted to pound into paste had failed miserably.

So miserably that he now had thousands and thousands and thousands of Lien to burn on funeral expenses.

Instead of having twelve Faunus standing tall and proud, he had twelve bedraggled survivors unceremoniously drag in twelve bodies. The survivors collapsed to their knees, shock evident on their faces. Their Grimm masks were destroyed, their faces scarred from the retaliation. Behind them, the bodies of the fallen stared, eyes frozen at the sky, bullet holes blasted in their heads, stomachs, and chests.

Clint knew that that was only the bodies that could be recovered. There were Faunus that had been reduced to bits of ash thanks to Ember Celica, and Faunus that had ended up horribly mangled after the retaliation, so badly injured that they couldn't be identifiable.

One Faunus was not feeling pain or shock, only anxiety. To the side of the group, a female chameleon Faunus stood, trembling.

Ilia Amitola had been the fourth enforcer when the first group attacked the museum, and one of the Faunus to organize the botched ambush on Team RWBY. Both missions had failed catastrophically, and now she had to be the one to deliver the bad news to her leader.

She tried to fight down a surge of panic, but it was evident to everyone that she was fighting a losing battle. The trio of spots near her neck burned a vivid blue, and her hand was perpetually fixed to the whip on her belt.

She dropped to a deep bow before Clint. "Sir, I… I-I didn't…" Ilia stammered.

"What happened." It wasn't so much a question as it was an imperative – Clint's voice seemed to reverberate in the silence.

"Sir… there was nothing we could do."  
"Was it Team RWBY?" Clint asked. Ilia nodded, barely managing to contain herself from panicking.

"Who else did they have with them? Was it the boy that took our enforcers out?"  
Ilia nodded, and mustered up the courage to speak. "Yes… i-it was th-the boy and… and T-team RWBY."  
The silence seemed to last forever. Finally, Clint nodded. "Enforcer Amitola, please leave. I must talk with Supreme Leader Taurus about this."

Ilia had never moved so fast in her life than when she did at that moment, barely believing that she had escaped the wrath of her boss.

As soon as she left the tent, Clint furiously slammed his hand into the desk, over and over again, channeling every part of his wrath into the situation. A cup of coffee fell off his desk and toppled to the floor with the crash of breaking ceramic. The phone receiver jolted free, dangling limply off the edge of the desk, and his sheaf of papers were now scattered all through the tent.  
Clint then erupted into two minutes of unprintable invective, culminating in an imaginary vision of himself stabbing that boy over and over and over and over...

He finally seemed to come to his senses, looking at the desk with shock as the receiver rang.

_Oh shit, it's Supreme Leader Taurus._

To describe how much power Supreme Leader Adam Taurus had over the White Fang and Clint as a whole, using a simile would probably be the easiest way. If Clint was a drop of water, Adam was the Pacific Ocean. Or if Clint was a planet, Adam would be a galaxy.

Not that this did anything to help Clint's feverish thoughts as he dispelled the similes, gingerly picking up the receiver, hoping to end up on Adam's good side.

The cold voice of Adam Taurus ran through the receiver. "Suddarth."

"Supreme Leader Taurus." Clint reciprocated. It seemed strange that they would only refer to each other by last names, considering that the Supreme Leader's first name was "Adam", but White Fang protocol dictated that anyone who is not a superior to another person must use last names only.

He had seen Adam run his blade through someone for not calling him "Supreme Leader", and chop another poor Faunus's head clean off for calling him "Adam" instead of "Supreme Leader Taurus."  
Clint really wanted to keep his head in one piece, so he continued to refer to Adam as Supreme Leader.

"What is the situation with the ambush on Team RWBY?" Adam inquired.  
_The situation? The situation is that my enforcers fucked up so badly I'm spending half of the White Fang's yearly budget on funeral expenses. And there's twelve bodies for processing. And we have to cope with helping fifty injured men._

"The ambush was unsuccessful, Supreme Leader," Clint said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. "We lost twelve fighters, fifty were injured."

"Did any of the enemy get injured?"

"Supreme Leader, as far as we can tell… no."

There was silence, broken only by heavy breathing on the end of the phone. Then, abruptly, the silence was replaced by a thump and something very heavy and breakable shattering. The sounds started to get louder and louder in a crescendo of destruction as the sounds of shattering glass, smashing plastic, and ripped cloth echoed through the receiver.

_THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!_

_CRASH! CRASH!_

"_AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"_

"_BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!"_

Had Clint not have been scared out of his mind, it might have been quite comical. As it was, hearing the smashup through his receiver was terrifying.

If he had to guess, Adam wasn't very happy about the botched ambush either. And his rage would probably cost the White Fang thousands in Lien.

Finally, after about three minutes, Adam got back on the receiver, sounding far less calm than he had in the beginning of the phone call.

"So how much Lien will it be for the funeral expenses?"  
Clint gulped – that was the one question he really, really, _really _didn't want to answer. But when Adam said "jump", every other White Fang member said, "How high?"  
So Clint told him, his voice stuttering a bit from the exertion. "S-Supreme Leader, it w-will cost us…. F-fifty t-thousand l-lien."

If the first rage had been violent, it was nothing compared to this one.

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

_THUMP!  
BANG! BANG! BANG!_

Clint swallowed as he heard the gunshots through the receiver. It sounded like Adam had been too mad to do anything else and had decided to shoot up his office, but Clint didn't dare ask. Finally, there was a thump and a loud scream:

"_FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"_

One more gunshot severed the connection, and Adam's rage was suddenly replaced by a dial tone.

_Did… did that madman just shoot his receiver?_

Fighting back panic after hearing both of Adam's rages, Clint had a few things on his mind. _Who's Blake? And why is Adam so angry?_

Of course, he wanted to keep his head within the vicinity of his body, and so he didn't want to talk to Adam about that.

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair, picked up a sheet of crumpled, ripped paper off the floor, put it down, and began to read.

Back in Beacon, I watched with a little bit of self-satisfaction as the White Fang guy in his tent completely lost his mind.

"I'm going to be honest, Ozpin, I'm enjoying this," I smiled as I saw the man spike a coffee cup at the floor. It shattered to bits as the man screamed.

"Do you understand what you've done?" Ozpin quizzed me as the man, unsatisfied, picked up his other coffee cup and lobbed it at the ceiling.

A brown stain spread across the ceiling – that monster had wasted perfectly good coffee!

"No, and I want to watch this forever," I replied, seeing the man pick up his chair and smash it into his LCD monitor, before pounding his desk in disgust. There was something very comical, and karmic, about the whole thing, but after that, it just became repetitive.

Besides the rage sequence, there was nothing else that was really important about it. It was just the guy talking with someone else, then at the end, throwing the phone down like it was a handful of uranium.

At the end of the sequence, Ozpin pushed the stop button on the monitor.

I finally tore my eyes away from the scene to look at Ozpin, who had the tiniest hint of a smile on his face.

"You were certainly effective. But we can't let you go anywhere else. You might as well have painted a target on your back."  
"Well, I would like to join Beacon anyway."

"Oh, is that true? Normally, we'd need a formal application process, but I guess we could waive that." Ozpin seemed nonchalant.  
A smile spread across my face. "I'd like that very much."  
Ozpin swiveled the monitor around to face him and began to type at the keys. It was then that I noticed that there were no keys. The monitor looked normal, but his keyboard was _holographic. _

_Great, another thing that I have to store for research purposes._

The rest of the application process was far more mundane – I had to supply my name, age, and gender, blah blah blah, you know how it is. At the end, though, Ozpin said something that surprised me.

"Students at Beacon will go through an Initiation. Basically, you'll be dropped off into a forest full of Grimm-"  
"What are Grimm?" I asked, but Ozpin ignored me.

"One more thing, Mr. Bindweed" - I shivered, I hadn't gotten used to Ozpin using my full name yet - "for initiation, there is one key tip. _Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path. Or you will die._"

A deathly silence filled the office, as though someone had dropped a flashbang on the table. It was interrupted by a loud cough that made my head whirl around. I'd forgotten Ironwood was even there.

"With all due respect, Ozpin, may we move on to the issue of safeguarding Vale during the Vytal Festival?" Ironwood asked.

"I believe so." Ozpin nodded. "Mr. Bindweed, the interview is over. Please exit my office with Ms. Goodwitch and the other members of Team RWBY."

"Team RWBY?" I echoed.

"Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Yang Xiao-Long and Blake Belladonna," Goodwitch clarified. "All teams at Beacon are made up of four huntsmen or huntresses. The first initial signifies the team leader." _Which explains why Ruby was always dragging the rest of her team around, even if they liked it or not. _

"Team RWBY will lead you to the ballroom, where you will meet other huntsmen and huntresses. Get a good nights rest, because initiation will be in the next 2 days."

"Initiation? Isn't that where-"

"Yes." Glynda cut me off, before parroting Ozpin's speech. "You must not hesitate to destroy anything in your path-"  
"Or I will die," I finished, hearing the sentence beforehand.

"Correct. And since you don't have a weapon yet, we'll schedule an appointment with the Forge first thing tomorrow morning."

"What's the Forge?"  
"The Forge is where students make and test their own weapons. It can get quite… _explosive,_" Glynda emphasized. "However, we have already reinforced all the walls with titanium and repaired all the damages. Let's hope that we don't have another… incident."

Judging by her tone, I thought it wisely not to ask what the _incident_ was. I made a mental note to ask Ruby whatever happened in the Forge.

"And that's everything!" Ironwood interjected, practically shoving me out of Ozpin's office. Literally. His hands were on my shoulders and he was physically pushing me, desperate to talk to Ozpin after god knows how long I spent with him. Glynda glared at him with an irritated look, but I sighed and stepped outside, where the members of Team RWBY were waiting for me.

Ruby was the first one to react, gasping in surprise before unconvincingly whispering "We totally weren't eavesdropping!"  
In my peripheral vision, I saw Yang smack her forehead.

"So? How was it?" Blake asked. "Did you pass?"  
I smiled. "Yes, Blake. Yes I did."  
All four girls of Team RWBY broke into a smile.

"That's great! So do you know when initiation is?" Yang said.

"2 days."  
"And the Forge?" Ruby piped in. _Right, I forgot about that. Gotta ask her about the "incident"._

"Tomorrow."  
"Yay!" Ruby literally bounced out of the room in joy. "We can help you make weapons! Pew pew pew!"  
"Is she really that enthusiastic about guns?" I whispered to Yang as I saw Ruby run down the hallway making finger guns and loud whooshing noises with her breath.

"That, and more."  
I couldn't help smiling.  
I was going to have a really good year at Beacon.  
Hopefully.

**White Fang Training Camp**

Undisclosed Location

00:30 Hours

Adam Taurus looked at the shattered remains of his office, which were looking rather pathetic after his latest outburst that put Clint's to shame. _Oh well, it's the higher-ups who have to pay for this, not me._

After hearing about Clint's experience with that red-headed boy who had thwarted the museum robbery, he decided to send some of his best enforcers after him.

Sure, the assassination attempt would take place at Beacon Academy. Sure, it would happen in the ballroom, where there would be upwards of one hundred students –_ armed_ students. Sure, his enforcers were trained and had Aura. But to Adam, it was worth losing five men for the purpose of taking out the boy that had single-handedly (or, with Team RWBY's help, quint-handedly) crippled the operations of the White Fang.

It didn't hurt that the men he picked were trapped in a catch-22 situation: if they followed Adam's orders, they would most certainly die. Against nearly a hundred students, an attack would be suicide, or very near suicide. But if the men didn't, the White Fang would execute them for insubordination.

It also helped that one or two of his enforcers were ones who he detested, and now he finally had an excuse to get rid of him.

_What could possibly go wrong?_

Adam sat back in his chair, Wilt and Blush lying in a scabbard on his desk, staring down at an opened manila envelope. A small sheet of paper peeked out of the envelope. On the paper lay the stoic face of Ethan Bindweed. Red hair, brown eyes, white skin, and a tall stature glared back at him. Adam unsheathed Wilt, and with a single strike, buried the blade into Ethan's left eye socket. He opened his drawer and pulled out a book of matches, ripping the photo in half as he yanked it off Wilt's blade, before tossing the match onto the torn photo and cackling loudly.

"You aren't invincible, Ethan Bindweed. Some day, somewhere. I will find you. And I can't wait to kill you."  
He was still smiling – a devilish, psychotic smile – as the paper burned to ashes and he swept them leisurely off his desk. Sunlight glinted off of the burnt particles as they drifted slowly to the floor, while Adam lay back in his chair with a maniacal grin on his face.


End file.
